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Depth of Commitment
By Steven Pressfield
The question is, “What’s the main difference between a pro and an amateur?”
My answer: depth of commitment.
I’ve always wanted to meditate. But my depth of commitment is unbelievably shallow. I can’t count my breaths past twenty. And pain in the knees? At the first twinge I’m up and outa there. It’s pathetic. I’m ashamed of myself. I’m an amateur. I will never succeed on my meditation cushion, and I don’t deserve to.
I lack depth of commitment.
One way to measure depth of commitment is to ask yourself of any calling, “How much adversity am I willing to endure to pursue it?”
Can you stand being broke? Can you live in a garret? Are you willing to work through pain—emotional, psychological, spiritual? Can you weather doubt, fear, despair?
The artist or entrepreneur must be like the hero of a movie. He has to be the protagonist of his own life, meaning be willing to pursue his objective (rescue his daughter from kidnappers, save the earth from vampires, kill Osama bin Laden) to the ends of the earth and then catch a ride on a rocket and keep on pursuing.
I need to know if you can commit.
Si, I can commit.
In real life, depth of commitment is more important than talent. It’s more important than beauty or skill, more important even than luck, because its produce is perseverance, endurance, tenacity.
My friend Hermes Melissanidis won a gold medal in gymnastics at the Atlanta Olympics.
When Hermes was nine, he saw gymnastics on TV for the first time. He knew at once that this was what he wanted to do.
I went to my parents and told them I wanted to dedicate myself to training and win a gold medal in the Olympic Games. Would they let me? I promised to work and pay them back.
My family are all doctors. The idea that I would pursue gymnastics instead of medicine was out of the question. I was nine years old. My mother and father refused to even hear of it.
I decided to go on a hunger strike. I don’t know how I even knew what a hunger strike was. But I announced that I would not eat until my family agreed to let me study gymnastics.
After four days, they caved. Not all the way though. They made me promise that, along with training as a gymnast, I would continue my studies and become a doctor. I agreed.
Hermes did both.
That’s depth of commitment. You can possess it at nine years old.
Another way to measure depth of commitment is to ask yourself, “How much am I willing to sacrifice to pursue my calling?”
Will you give up one hour a day? Can you pass on watching the Steelers down at the sports bar? How about creature comforts? Can you do without?
Can you give up financial security? Can you leave your boyfriend? How about your whole family?
Depth of commitment is critical on the artistic level. We can never fool the Muse. She knows when we’re faking it.
But depth of commitment is make-or-break too in the real world of commerce and career. Do you dream of being a ballet dancer but you’re not willing to move to New York City? The screenplay that gets mailed in to Tinseltown from Madison, Wisconsin is rejected before it’s even out of the slush pile. The producers think (and rightly so), If this writer is not committed enough to even move here, why should we respond to his submission with our own commitment of time and attention and energy?
The third test of depth of commitment is this:
How crushed will you be if you never fulfill your dream or live out your calling?
This is the big one, because there’s only one answer and all of us know what it is.
The question then becomes: Can depth of commitment be increased? Can we move from shallow to deep?
My answer is an emphatic yes.
If fact I believe that’s how we all learn. That’s what improvement is. It’s not only an increase in skill or knowledge. It’s a deepening of commitment.
I have a friend at the gym named Craig. He’s not a gigantic bodybuilder, just a regular athletic guy. He told me the following story:
See that machine there, the iso-lateral arm press? I’ve been stuck at 110 for weeks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t lift more than 110 pounds.
Then one morning I happen to glance over just as that tiny blonde, Jeannie—you know the one I’m talking about: 5′4″, 140 pounds?—heads over to that machine. I watch her slap a 45-pound plate and a 25-pounder onto each side, 140 total. She sits down and bangs out three sets like there’s nothing to it.
I said, Are you kidding me? I was blushing. I’m not kidding. My heart stopped. I thought, How can this little girl, who is seven inches shorter than me and sixty pounds lighter, make me look like an absolute punk?
I asked Craig how much weight he was doing on that machine now.
One-fifty, man. Took me a few weeks but I got it. All because of that cute little Jeannie. After watching her, I said to myself, “I will burst a blood vessel, I will pass out, I will make my heart explode … but I will get that weight up!”
That’s called increasing your depth of commitment.
I’ve thought about it a lot. There seem to be several stages to the process.
The first is shame.
We fail at some endeavor and we feel terrible about ourselves.
Shame leads to self-respect.
Our toes touch bottom. We say, “I know I can do better. I cannot accept defeat in this endeavor.”
With that, our depth of commitment increases.
We resolve to overcome. We make up our minds. We gird our loins.
My first real job was as a junior copywriter at an ad agency in New York called Benton & Bowles. My boss was a very smart, very ambitious guy named Ed Hannibal. One day Ed quit. He was going to write a novel. Sure enough, he did—and it was a hit.
The book was called Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks and it was a real-deal success, not just critically but commercially.
I was twenty-two years old. I thought, “Hell, if Ed can do it, I can do it.” So I quit too.
Cut to seven years later. I’m dragging myself out of divorce, poverty, despair, blah blah etc., thinking, “Am I ready to try to try this same stunt again?”
I was. But the difference, this second time, was depth of commitment. The first time around, I thought writing a novel would be easy. The second time I am suitably chastened. I have had my butt handed to me and I know now, a little at least, how hard the job is and how much it is going to demand of me.
I finished that second novel (unlike the first), but I couldn’t find a publisher. Two years later: try again? Okay, but now with even greater depth of commitment.
That one flops too. Try again? Okay, now even deeper.
In a way, failure is fuel for depth of commitment. It raises the stakes. When our history is constituted entirely of Failure #1, Failure #2, and Failure #3, what else can we say to ourselves except, “I will burst a blood vessel, I will pass out, will make my heart explode … but I will NOT crap out a fourth time!”
What we’re really talking about here is cluenessness.
I was just plain dumb. Most of us are. We have no idea how hard things are. We think we’re bulletproof, we believe we’re invincible.
I think about Lebron James and how bad he felt, after all that “taking my talents to SouthBeach” stuff, when he and the Miami Heat flamed out in their first try at an NBA title with Lebron on the team. Next year they won. Why?
Depth of commitment.
Lebron went back to the drawing board. He looked in the mirror and realized that what he thought was good enough, wasn’t. He had to take his game to the next level, and he did.
Depth of commitment can be learned.
Robert B. Bannister, M.A., M.F.T
CA License #MFC27664
621 Chapala Street · Suite C Santa Barbara, California93101
805-705-3987 Fax: 866-294-0916Email: www://robbannistermft.com